Friday, June 13, 2014

Peter Pearson: Dragons in the Tower

I am writing to you from the top of
my own personal water tower. Right now.
Here’s a picture of it. I was lucky enough to get into the residency program at the Anderson Center (which you should all apply for, by the way), which means that I’ve been whisked into some
kind of impossible wonderland where artists are treated like gods and given an
entire month to do whatever they want. Today, for instance, I woke up without
an alarm (because seriously, who needs that bullshit) and went for a run
through the sculpture garden to the Cannon River, where I saw bald eagles,
goldfinches, turtles, and probably unicorns. Along the way, I stumbled across
an abandoned gravel pit, so I explored that for a while and came out with a
fist full of agates and three copper-plated bullets, which this city mouse
found absolutely fascinating. Then I jogged back, ate the food left by our
personal chef in the mansion that is somehow my residence, luxuriated in the
shower, and then literally ascended into my writing tower, where I come every
day to work on my novel. Light spills in from every direction as I look out over
the river valley, as well as nearby Highway 61, which I may have the staff
blockade for the remainder of my stay, as it displeases me. I may have that
power. Who knows?

After weeks in this fairy tale,
where someone actually warns me of anything that might disturb my artistic
trance (“Raking today. Sorry about that!”), where someone cooks for me and
cleans for me, where all quotidian roadblocks between me and Transcendent
Genius™ have been removed, the writing should be going great, right?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.
It’s not. I’m not in total crisis—the dilithium crystals haven’t fractured, nor
has Voldemort taken up residence in the back of my head (though that would be a
sweet excuse)—I just haven’t written nearly as much as I’d hoped, and in the
context of this unique gift of time, that feels sort of bad.

There’s a journal in my room that
past residents have filled with entries, many of which chronicle mountain-top
experiences, from which they descended with tablets of air and fire, their hair
permanently windblown. But there are also entries missing. Residents who, for
whatever reason, chose to remain silent. I wonder if they had months like the
one I’m having, months plagued by frustration, anxiety, and doubt. Months of
anemic output and disappointed expectations. When the words are flowing, the
tower is paradise. When they’re not, it’s like being locked in a closet with a
dragon. And this month, friends, the words have not been flowing. I have the
burns to prove it.

In writing, everyone likes to talk
about the good stuff. “I sold the book!” “I won the Triple Newbery!” “My agent
invented time travel and sent a copy of my book on the Voyager I spacecraft!”
This is as it should be. Good stuff feels good. Hard work and time-traveling
agents deserve recognition. However, the danger in everyone else’s good stuff
is that it can fool you into thinking that bad stuff doesn’t exist, or that it
only exists for you. Unchecked, you can develop a wicked case of impostor syndrome, assuming that everyone else has it together and that one
day you’ll be unmasked for the fraud you truly are.

But you know what? Everyone feels
that way. Hayao Miyazaki, the most celebrated animator in the world, can’t even bear to watch his own movies because he fixates on the mistakes. Kate DiCamillo,
when asked if writing gets easier after you win a slew of awards, just shook
her head. “No,” she said. “It gets harder.” We are all storms with smiles on.
We just don’t like to talk about it.

Did you watch the TEDx talk that
inspired Jane’s brilliant post the
other day? If not, watch it now. It’s about grammar and Vietnam, and it is absolutely worth
your time. Really, I’ll wait.

(Makes arbitrary pronouncements from
tower to kill time.)

Back? Great. I bring it up because I
realized something when I watched that video: I’ve been spending weeks in the
subjunctive. Up in my tower, I’ve obsessed over the possible world in which I
was crushing it with this revision, rather than being crushed by it. The
further those two worlds diverged, the harder writing in the real one
became.

In her critical thesis lecture,The
Way to the Chair: Zen and the Practice of Writing, Mandy Davis said this:
“In writing, there is no place to reach. No perfection to achieve. There is
only writing to be done and effort to be made, moment after moment.” Writing is
hard, friends. And, when you shoulder up a big ol’ bag of expectations, it can
be damn near impossible.

Writers are eager to forgive
everyone but themselves. Practice. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle. As Jane
says, “Be as kind to yourself as you would a close friend.” Sit down, embrace
the work as it is, and go from there. Remember, the perfect world doesn’t have
the burden of actually existing. Your progress in the real one, however slow,
dwarfs anything that’s happening in the imaginary fields of perfection.

***

Peter Pearson graduated from the MFAC program in
2012. His first picture book, How to Eat an Airplane, comes out from
Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins in 2015.

Oh Peter, you describe it exactly! I've also been on a residential retreat (done two weeks, have another two weeks in late August) and like you, I expected the magic of being there to inspire a torrent of words. Every day was a struggle. The only thing that kept me feeling OK (and not a fraud) was to keep a writing diary of every word I wrote. That made me persevere but also bolstered me up. In the end I realised the best part of it was the time to daydream and stare out the window without feeling guilty!